


it was always going to end

by Rovnsky (Lethally)



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Heavy Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-16
Updated: 2016-09-12
Packaged: 2018-05-27 03:06:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 834
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6267037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lethally/pseuds/Rovnsky
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>the way you said "i love you"</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. when i'm dead

**Author's Note:**

> Prompts I received on tumblr @ rovnsky

Jiang kicks at Monmouth’s door, loudly, at three am on the 7th of July. Ronan opens the door violently, shirtless and half drunk. Jiang jumps three feet up at the sound. His eyes are wild and twitching, almost rolling out of their socket at every loud noise, his galaxy colored hair falling all over his face, and his hands shaking like an addict going through withdrawal.

The weight of Ronan’s eyes makes him hide his hands in his leather jacket pocket, his boots scuffing the floor as he stands there, cardboard box at his feet.

The silence is too heavy for Ronan to cut it, so he waits. After a few minutes of them both standing there, silent, Jiang alternating between avoiding Ronan’s eyes or staring straight through him with eyes full of hatred. Finally, his phone vibrates, cracks in the summer heat, Jiang looks behind him at Swan’s car, parked further down the street.

Jiang sighs, his hands out of his jacket, then around the box, then the box in Ronan’s hands, then gone.

Shoulders raised in a shrug, Ronan wanders back inside, up the stairs, into his room. Noah’s waiting inside, his arms around Ronan’s whiskey bottle, his eyes landing on the box, and his face blurrying out, before he snaps back into realness.

He gets up from Ronan’s bed, the whiskey bottle on the floor, heading straight through the wall, “don’t let him get to you” is all he says.

Another shrug.

Back in bed, the bottle uncapped and his lips tingling, Ronan opens the box.

Inside, pictures. Many many many pictures. Taken from a cellphone. Most of them dark and blurry, shapes and headlights, teeth and blood. The paper is smooth under his fingers, he can’t imagine someone like Jiang putting money into good paper, or even bothering to print pictures.

He’s gone through over thirty pictures when he finally finds one of Kavinsky, sitting crosslegged on a white Mitsu, his smile soft and his knuckles bloody. Bottom left of the picture, there’s a hand, bloody too, wearing leather bracelets. He looks through the other pictures quickly, the whiskey giving him heartburn, and he finds many of him, in his car, on the sidewalk, under the streetlights, all at night.

And then some taken during the day, at Aglionby, in the hallways, on the grass outside the Latin building, on the parking lot, asleep on a table, every picture taken during the day is off him, except one, Kavinsky and Prokopenko and Swan and Skov and Jiang, all in stained uniforms, lying down on the grass, laughing. Ronan doesn’t remember a time he has seen them laughing, truly laughing, with tears of mirth on their face. The picture feels fake, and yet he knows, as he watches Kavinsky’s closed eyes, a hand over his forehead, his mouth midst laughter, teeth everywhere and yet. Softness. Blurred edges? How would he know? Dead is dead.

At the bottom of the box, under all the pictures, a replica of his leather bracelets, a perfect copy, worn from use but white instead of brown. Impulsively, Ronan ties the bracelet around his free wrist, blaming everything on the alcohol, the photos back in the box and the box kicked off the bed, finally he falls asleep.

A picture of him and Kavinsky, arms around shoulders, joyfully drunk, smirking at the world, resting at the top of the pile.


	2. as goodbye

Kavinsky suddenly grabs Ronan’s head, his two bony hands, thumbs on his jaw and fingers digging in his neck and kisses him, chapped lips colliding. Shock wearing off Ronan, his hands reach for Kavinsky’s face, pulling him on his knees, cradled between Ronan’s legs. Kavinsky’s hair is soft under his touch, and the earth trembles around them, a fine tremor, not unlike a purr.

Suddenly, Kavinsky tilts Ronan’s head back, his mouth open in surprise, and there is something terrible sliding down his throat, he’s choking on it, his hands clawing at Kavinsky’s back as he whispers nonsenses. It tastes of woods, and dirt, feels like vine crawling down his throat, his whole body burning with magic.

The thing is inside him, Ronan breathing in loudly, a drowned man brought back to life, while Kavinsky’s hands are still around his neck.

Kavinsky pulls himself out of Ronan’s grip, his clawed hands releasing his shirt and Ronan has to look up at him, his eyes squinting as Kavinsky edges become blurry.  
“This should be enough. It’s all I had left, so don’t fuck up, Lynch. Now I know you’ll remember me. Legacies and all that.”

The wind picks up around them, and Kavinsky becoming dust at the edges, carried away until there is nothing left but Ronan, and the woods, and the vines merging tenderly with his ribs.

A scream escapes his sore throat, pure rage and relief mixed together as the knowledge and power he needed becomes part of him.

Only Kavinsky would grant him the power and knowledge to save Matthew, while taking away everything else.


End file.
